mom says at the end of our phone call. the last time we spoke was in August, after my last p/intox arrest - "do you think life is a game" she slurred "no grandma I/" "it's not a fucking game you know" 2 years since my last visit to Blairstown, even on xmas, I find an excuse of some new girl, and I need to meet her family/. Joanne Fiester, her husband now an engraved stone on the hill where he taught me to steady the .22 "hold your breath, squeeze the trigger slowly between heartbeats" he told me. | 1 |
"We'll do our thing" she always said to mom, at the halfway drop off spot for my visits - the pizza hut in Marshaltown. | 2 |
I remember, on trips to the small one room library with her, we had to drive past it, do a u turn on the railroad tracks, come back on our path and park/ I didn't understand diagonal parking spaces then/ | 3 |
I abandoned her after his passing/ left her to the large white house on | 4 |
Cross street | 5 |
"call her early in the evening" | 6 |
mother urges/stumbling | 7 |
on the Oxycontin. | 8 |
we tied the whirling blue dun in the basement, under rows of tube lights we hung together - miniature vices bolted to the particle board table, | 9 |
"the trout" he said, "are running thick on the Turkey River" | 10 |
"It's lonely here" she told me on my last visit, frank talk for her, | 11 |
departing from her normal vodka stories of depression potato sack dresses. | 12 |
she walked away to shake/ as that is our family/ | 13 |
I grabbed her by the wrist/ as I am adopted | 14 |
"you will not cry alone" I told her | 15 |
she pulled | 16 |
I held firm "you will not cry alone" | 17 |
we shook together at the formica table | 18 |
where he taught me to dip toast in | 19 |
my eggs/ | 20 |
she clipped his yellow nails | 21 |
"call her early in the evening" | 22 |
mother urges | 23 |
"I am no good by then", | 24 |
I say to the wall | 25 |
as the phone clicks | 26 |